Beverage and other canning companies are interested in providing their customers with cans that have some degree of design differentiation. For example, in a store setting, a consumer may choose between a group of beverage cans that each contain an identical product, but have different images imprinted on each can, such as different phrases, names, or images. An efficient way to provide this design differentiation at the point of consumer purchase is to provide the design differentiation early in the supply chain, at the can decoration stage.
While known can decorators are extremely efficient at producing cans that have a common design, these known decorators are not capable of producing cans with design differentiation using a single blanket wheel during one production run. It is possible to have several blanket wheels that are each configured to produce different designs and then mixing the cans together after decoration during palleting. But such mixing of different production lines adds a degree of complexity to operation that hinders efficiency. By modifying each blanket on the blanket wheel to include raised and recessed portions that are different from other blankets on the same wheel, a single blanket wheel is capable of decorating cans with as many different designs as the wheel has blankets.